Thursday, April 11, 2013

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES - REVIEW

There is
a tendency when assessing the value of something to confuse the amount of effort
involved in trying to accomplish something with the actual results. The old adage of "the journey is better
than the destination" is a great motto to live ones' life by, but it also
implies that eventually one will - at some point - arrive at some kind of
conclusion. Just imagine how frustrating
it would be to journey to nowhere.

Director
Derek Cianfrance's (Blue Valentine)
newest film, The Place Behind the Pines,
might be the cinematic equivalent of this destination-less journey. It is clear that Cianfrance has a lot to say
with his new film but never figures out exactly what. It is a modern, dramatic epic, the likes of
which are rarely seen. The Place Behind the Pines is stuffed
full of ideas, beautiful cinematography, film trickery, and compelling
performances and yet this reckless ambition never solidifies into one coherent
point.

The Place Behind the Pines is a triptych structurally:
three stories that follow Luke (Ryan Gosling) a traveling circus motorcyclist,
a morally righteous cop named Avery (Bradley Cooper), and their kids Jason and
AJ (Dane DeHaan and Emory Cohen). It is
a film about forgiveness, dreams, morality, and sins, specifically how they tumble
down from one generation to another.
That's not to mention that it is also a film about bank-heists, bullying
drama, and police corruption. There is
enough content here for three films and as the subplots pile up the film seems
like it is spinning in circles.

Perhaps
this cyclical feeling was Cianfrance's intent, as evidenced by the opening
3-minute shot of the film. In this
brilliant and technically masterful image, the audience is introduced to a
faceless carny, Luke, as he walks from his trailer to perform for the
circus. All the audience is allowed to
see of Luke is Ryan Gosling's platinum-blonde, dyed hair and tattoo-covered,
statuesque body. He is a man of myth and
mystery, a traveller of the world worthy of photographing, which the attendants
of the show hastily attempt to do, as if he was a Bigfoot creature.

The shot
ends with Luke mounting his motorcycle and entering into a caged globe for a
death defying game of dodge with two other cyclists. Their spinning is equally impressive as it is
hypnotic. Cianfrance might be commenting
on the cyclical nature of life and the steel trap that keeps it locked in this
continual spiral. If so, congratulations
should go to him for the film's ambitious opening and often stunning
set-pieces.

The
problem is that in order to get there, Cianfrance has his characters often act
completely out of character only to further the plot. When Luke wants to provide for his young son,
a result of a fling with Romina (Eva Mendes), he quickly resorts to robbing
banks. There is no set-up for this kind
of behavior or real urgency for why such dramatic action needs to be taken,
other than out of Luke's own desire to assert power as his son's father. This kind of plot-focused storytelling creates
several moments of dramatic crises that seem completely unattached to anything
else that came before.

All of
these plotlines introduce interesting moral questions that are often left to
dangle without an answer or sense of resolution. So superficially, there is a lot to recommend
about the complexity and technical bravado of The Place Beyond the Pines but by the time audiences reach its
"15 Years Later", a moment that comes in the last 45 minutes of the
film, all the questions and moral pontificating has long since grown
stale. The Place Beyond the Pines is a big, sprawling, and yet dumb film
masquerading as "A FILM!"

Take away
the film's big-name leads, stunning cinematography, unique location, and
enthralling set-pieces and what is left is a coincidence driven story that asks
questions that are smarter than the film can answer. However, that's a lot of elements to overlook
from a film this ambitious and knowingly epic. More than anything else, The Place Beyond the Pines, will leave audiences hungry for
Cianfrance's next film; one that is hopefully just a single film with an end to
the journey clearly in sight.

4 comments:

Have you seen either of those films? I'm curious what you think about all of these movies but fear that you take your cues from Brian and little too much. Not that he isn't brilliant, I just want to know what Ric thinks after he sees the movies.

SON OF SPEED RACER, thanks for reading the blog. I hope you enjoyed the review. I don't read other critic's work before I write my reviews so I can't really say that I know or care much what they say until I put mine out. I know this film has lavished praise from a number of people, and I totally expect it to. I predicted to love this film as well and there is a lot to love here. However, I don't and I would encourage you not to judge a film before seeing it. If you do see it and feel differently or the same, I would love to hear what you think.